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Dordeduh

Negura Bunget has been one of those avant garde type of blackened metal bands that has often been recommended to me but I've yet to hear an album that has really taken me by the socks and shaken me down. But apparently at some point in the mid 2000s, that band had a bit of turmoil, resulting in a pair of members leaving the band while Negura Bunget's drummer forged onwards with new musicians. The departing duo ultimately put together their own project, calling it Dordeduh (the name comes from Romanian, but feels somewhat clumsy to my neanderthal English ears). This offshoot project has so far just released this teaser EP and I must say it has caught my attention more than any Negura Bunget album. Now, I'm not trying to start a media war between these bands that will get the Twitter world all agasp, but for my tastes, I am finding Dordeduh much more interesting.

The two songs on Valea Omului aren't anything that fans of modern metal haven't heard before. Dordeduh isn't trying to reinvent the better mousetrap, but the pair of songs here demonstrate these guys have a strong grasp on songwriting and good arrangements. There are plenty of atmospheric sections and good builds within, good clean vocals and of course the standard raspy ones. The second song, "Cumpat", is excellent.

Dordeduh appears to have positioned themselves to move in nearly any music direction they want in the future. There are elements of their background in Negura Bunget but plenty of more contemporary elements such as the shoegazer DNA strand that more bands are demonstrating. The one drawback of this EP is that it is merely thirteen minutes and I suspect many listeners will definitely want to hear more. I certainly count myself among that group. Valea Omului is a nice, solid debut for this experienced band.

Finally following up their brief 2010 EP, Valea Omului, Dordeduh (and their amusingly phonetically derpish name) have released an epic length studio album called Dar De Duh. With this release, the former Negura Bunget members (alongside a pair of newcomers) have finally stopped screwing around with the potential of their previous band and given fans of ambitious black metal influenced music something to chew over for the coming months. Stretching to nearly one hour and twenty minutes, Dar De Duh (no relation to Munly de Dar He) provides a wandering journey that manages to never quite get dull at any point in the album. Many metal bands have this sort of ambition, but frankly, not all that many are capable of managing such a dynamic record that flows from start to finish.

Dordeduh weaves together both heavy and softer passages, clean singing and black metal rasps, and forays into slightly experimental sections. And that's just in the first track "Jind de Tronuri", which spans more than sixteen minutes. The album follows this pace through, although not all songs are quite this lengthy. Two others make it past the ten minute mark, which make the remaining tracks practically short pop ditties by comparison. And for those who must have comparisons to other bands, Dordeduh mostly falls into the later era Enslaved realm of music. It is safe to say that if you've been digging on Enslaved's output for the last decade, you don't even need to finish reading this review. You should just go find a copy immediately because this is completely up your alley. The two bands don't really sound identical, but the ambitious spirit is the same.

Much of the enjoyment in this album is that although Dordeduh is a bit off kilter, they never dwell in the morass of dissonance for the sake of it. This is very musical, fluid and solid record that stands out in a very crowded field of black metal influenced acts. Black metal as a whole can be incredibly stagnant, but Dordeduh has managed to take their roots and expand into something very interesting on Dar De Duh.